Not everyone loves the Duggars

I know we have fans of the Duggars here. Good on you. I just don’t get the beauty behind this, not after reading Quiverful. Everybody hurry up and read your copy (and I’ll reread mine because I’m old and I forget stuff) and we can have a hair-pullin’. Or a gentle discusssion, one.

73 responses to “Not everyone loves the Duggars”

Josie went home and then had to go back to the hospital. During her homecoming, the Bates family (who have at least 8 kids but I could be underestimating) came to meet the baby. This is, of course, nuts.
I am not shocked however that Michelle and Jim Bob said theyd be open to having more. That is a central aspect of their faith (along with being submissive.) And I’m sure their tv show helps them stay debt free.

How can all of those children get the proper amount of attention from just one mom and one dad? It’s sad to me that so many couples are unable to have children, yet this couple spits ’em out the way Steven King does novels.

Enough already…we get it-you both know how to make babies-pay attention to the 19 you have.

We’ve had some vigorous discussions about this, and I guess I keep coming back to that: How do you give parental attention to 19 people? Maybe I’m revealing my own shortcomings here, but no way could I do that.

The US military long ago established guidelines for leadership and how many leaders are needed to control so many men.
The Duggar’s need a heck of a lot more Sergeants!
That’s no way to run an Army and it is certainly no way to run a family.

You should read Free Jinger if you want to talk about Fundamentalists a lot and read a lot of blogs by Fundies.
Each of the younger children is assigned an older child as a “buddy.” The Duggars also make it a point to talk to each child one on one during the week. (Jim Bob doesn’t work.) It sounds very hard on the woman’s body, but they don’t believe in birth control (including NFP or extended breastfeeding.) I don’t know, as someone that is pro choice I feel I have to be that way all around – if you don’t want to have kids, don’t. If you do, do. My primary concern is the lack of education given to the girls in particular. They are being raised to be dependent on men which is always a dicey situation.

God said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” Does the book explain why these people don’t think that six billion people are enough to say, okay, God’s command has been fulfilled, we can stop now?

See, here I need to revisit the book, but if memory serves, these people are operating on a literal interpretation of the scriptures, which means taking anything modern into account doesn’t work. So if there’s six billion of 60 billion, the Bible says go forth and multiply.

I just went to Free Jinger and followed a link and omg it was frightening. This one was all about whether or not girls needed a college education as much as boys. The way they threw around the word “Feminism” as a curse word was shocking.

The words that come to me when thinking about the Duggars are smug, stupid, and phrases like “incapable of understanding the concepts that Jesus actually presented.” Which had little to do with turning a woman into a breeding machine.

Which is just another piece of evidence that points to the fact that they are part of the subset of Christians who really love and put more emphasis on the Hebrew scriptures, more so than they love the Christian scriptures. They really should be referred to as “Christians for YHWH” (a retronym from “Jews for Jesus” that I just made up).

My friend and I feeling sorry for the Duggar children was what led to starting our blog, so they are quite the influential hot button. I can find no words to express how very sad I am for the Duggar girls. I wish I could adopt them.

I don’t know enough about the Duggars to know how they are raising their kids. Are the girls not allowed higher education? Lots of people out there do not encourage college for either gender.
To me, they appear to be a loving, responsible family. The kids seem smart, they have 800 times more life skills than I ever will and they appear happy. Appearances can be deceiving but why would I assume anything different?

1. World domination is why they have all those kids. (See the blog Raising Olives.)
2. Why you would assume something else is going on is taking about peek at ATI (Bill Gotherd.) The thing is they are making these choices for their children. Not encouraging is one thing saying no you will be a housewife is another. AND they want to make these choices FOR YOU. They are dominionists. See No.1. I don’t care for people that want to tell me how to live and what to believe no matter how sweet they are. THe total wifely submission thing gives me the willies too.
3. Of course they are cherry pickers. As far as biblical evidence of breastfeeding it seems babies were nursed until 3 yrs old (which is a natural form of birth control.) They do not do extended bfing because they want to reproduce more quickly.

And I’m glad they went to the hospital – I don’t wish them ill and Michelle doesn’t need to die (nor Josie of course.)

Are you speaking specifically of the Duggars or of the belief system they follow? Without the inside info on exactly what they tell their girls…I can’t make any assumptions. I’m in another conversation right now about Catholicism and the thing I’ve learned is that beliefs vary by a huge margin even though they all belong to the same religion.

Based on the courtship stuff and the shows showing them living (especially at the conferences they go to) I would be extremely shocked to find out that they did not tow the Gotherd/ATI and Vision Forum line.

And the world domination thing is very very common for Quiverful people. Plus Jim Bob ran for office and his politics are a matter of public record.

The courtship stuff is something my parents would have bought into…they are a terrible example of parenting girls but I don’t hate them and they did make all of us go to college even though they wanted us to assume more traditional roles. I don’t feel the need to judge the Duggars unless they display a very good reason for it. So far, I don’t see anything really wrong with what they’re doing. If anything it’s the same crap so many Christian parents are doing as far as patriarchy. But that doesn’t single them out among the see of Dobsonites.

I went to bed early last night or I would have jumped in here sooner. Long day in the sun at the zoo.

As some of you may remember I am more with Vegas in that I find many things about the Duggars to admire, especially after reading their book. I wrote about that in another post.

To clarify about the Duggar girls, or girls in that type of situation in general, I feel a sense of tragedy, yes, I am using a word that strong, for ANY girl raised like that, whether her last name is Duggar or not. I was a girl like that and it almost killed me.

It’s true we don’t know every detail of what goes on behind the cameras, but we can fairly extrapolate from the parents’ belief system that those particular girls are raised in a certain way.

I said in that other earlier post that I’m actually jealous of the Duggar mother in a very strange way – in a way I don’t even understand. I’m sure I could benefit from telling this to a professional counselor! She’s so (apparently) happy – as Vegas points out they all appear content – and she knows her purpose in life and she feels close to the one she thinks of as God. She’s peacefully living a life she chose and living it to its fullest, and in a way that makes her more advanced than I am.

Or maybe I miss the peacefulness I used to feel, when I didn’t know it was false.

To sum up, I agree with Vegas in that I try hard (I don’t always succeed) not to judge them, except when it comes to the way they perceive their girls. And I will go ahead and judge anyone for that.

Maybe I’ll have more to say after I read “Quiverfull” – it should be in my hands anyday! But Vegas is right, of course, beliefs can vary widely within any one system.

I’ve never seen the show, and don’t have any intention to do so. I also disagree with the family’s religious views. Having said that, I agree with Carol the longwinded — being pro-choice means supporting the choice to have children not just prevent conception.

Yes, but I have appointed myself Judge of the Universe. Not really. There is a lot about this whole quiverful movement that bothers me to the extreme, and my concern is that it’s being packaged and purtied up to the point that people will miss the rather glaring gender inequality there.

To show any thing less than happiness in one’s lifestyle is to dishonor God. Reading the stories of people who have left shows that there is a “Stay Sweet” mentality esp’ly for girls that is as insidious as that of the FLDS.

And they train their children according to the Pearls! (They have publicly talked about Blanket Training – you won’t be seeing this on the show. Its scary. And horrible.)
Again, I’m looking at the movement as a whole as well as some of the stuff they have said publicly. Its not the amount of children that is disturbing; its the ideology. Birth control pills ’cause’ abortions, therefore they should be illegal.

Well a kid was just murdered using the Pearls’ techniques. Blanket training is putting a baby on a blanket (with an attractive toy in reach) and slapping the baby’s hand when the baby reaches for it. So they will learn. You also stop them from getting off the blanket too. Makes it much easier to control. (It used intentionally.)

The reeeelly scary thing for me? There is no place for a single woman in societies like this. You either have the protection of a father or of a husband. If your father dies young or otherwise can’t support you, and you have no other male relatives willing to take you in, tough luck.

That is incredibly good to know. Does my husband know he has all the answers? Because he just may resent the extra burden I’m about the place on him — namely, all my decisions, my checkbook, my car payments, etc.

Total Womanhood got its comeuppance in a memorable scene from Fried Green Tomatoes. Kathy Bates coquettishly greets her oblivious boor of a husband at the door in saran wrap and heels; he brushes past her, piles his plate with the fried chicken she’s slaved over, grabs a beer from the fridge and settles into his recliner, eyes glued to the ballgame.

My headship! We have the wonderful opportunity to go and witness to the ER doctors as little Jubilee and Little Leviticus have fallen out of the Oak the lord mightily blessed us with and hit the head, for which providence has so divinely provided a skull to protect the brain!”

Carol, you managed to fulfill both of these commands with one fell swoop! You are truly wise.

“A wise woman knows that his peace of mind (and sometimes, wise understanding) is something she can give or take away by her observations and conversation concerning circumstances or people. She limits her conversation to the positive.

A wise woman sets a joyful mood in the household. She uses laughter, music and happy times to stir the children to a positive, joyful frame of mind. She knows this light-heartedness helps take stress off her husband.”

Those would be the relationships that marriage equality initiatives would foster? I’m telling you, we have marriage equality here in the Nutmeg State and thus far? Our livestock remains unmolested. And unmarried, as far as I can tell.

Wow. That is horrifying. The blanket training, the gender issues, the abuse of women and girls. Horrifying. If the Duggars used blanket training as described here, any respect I had for them went right out the window. Wrong wrong wrong.